Indigestion
by Denebola Leo
Summary: Being stuck in the jungle sucks, and it sucks even worse when your friend's prank backfires... (OG, One-shot for Halloween!)


"You're good at catchin' frogs, Yuffie...Just don't catch any more weird tastin' ones, Yuffie."

 _Shink_

 _Rip_

 _Splat_

Yuffie was in the middle of dissecting everyone's supper for the evening; her large catch of frogs lay in a pile on one side and the gutted ones on the other. Their innards lay in a small cloth bag that she would toss out into the sweltering jungles between Gongaga and Cosmo Canyon, the same jungle they had been stuck in for the last two and a half days straight now, because Cloud couldn't drive a vehicle through mud and rain to save his life.

 _Shink_

 _Rip_

 _Splat_

Maybe she shouldn't have shoved him out of the drivers seat and floored it, but that was the price they had to pay to see if it would have worked.

 _Shink_

 _Rip_

 _Splat_

Maybe she also shouldn't have added to the mud puddle the treads were stuck in by puking into it, either. Yuffie couldn't help it. It was hot and humid here, and her motion sickness had been at its peak. It had been what Barret called 'an absolute shitfest' since they had arrived.

 _Shink_

 _Rip_

 _Splat_

Yuffie cut into the belly of another dead frog, making a disgusted sound as she gutted the little thing. She should be used to it, but it was still gross. Yesterday by the campfire she told Red XIII to go out and hunt down a boar or anything furry, really. He responded that he really ought to keep the camp protected from monsters while Cloud, Tifa and Barret tried to unstuck the buggy.

 _Shink_

 _Rip_

 _Splat_

And she, Yuffie, the great treasure hunter of Wutai, was stuck catching frogs for supper as Aerith looked for more firewood. Right now she was alone to mumble and grumble, the buggy deep in the jungle and the flower girl out there looking for a dry branch to place on the flames. They had to camp here; any closer to the buggy and the ground was too soggy.

 _Shink_

 _Rip_

 _Splat_

At least Cait Sith was with Red XIII. He would have driven her mad.

"You should be careful, y'know."

Yuffie jumped at the voice, then turned and looked up to tsk Aerith for sneaking up on her, the great materia hunter and ninja. "Doin' that doesn't help me be careful!"

Aerith let out a cute little chuckle before crouching on her feet to watch the teenager gut their supper. Some twigs and branches were held in her arms. "I didn't mean it like that." She looked around, as if she was about to tell her a dirty secret. "There's Touch Mes in these parts."

"Touch mes? Wow, sounds totally perverted!" Another frog was dropped off on the gutted pile.

The flower girl rolled her eyes and smirked at Yuffie's snark. "It's a kind of monster, I was told. The people in the village at the border of the jungle were talking about it."

Yuffie kind of wished her sort of friend was off sulking about her mysterious old boyfriend whose parents she ran into. Maybe she shouldn't have been listening in on Aerith's conversation with Tifa while they were in Gongaga, but they had been talking outside of her hiding spot after she had 'borrowed' a few pieces of materia from the shop keeper. She liked juicy gossip as much as the next teenager, so why not listen in?

The ninja looked up at Aerith, her dagger ready to slice through another frog belly. "Okay, so what about them?"

Aerith rose up and took the bundle of sticks to the small fire, carefully placing them upon the glowing embers and watching as the flames licked at the largest slab of dry wood she had found in the jungle so far. She turned back to Yuffie. "They look like large frogs that stand on their hind legs."

"Haven't seen anything like that, thank gawd." She would have punted the creepy things.

"Not just that...With a touch, they can turn people into frogs."

Yuffie gave a piercing glare with her dark eyes, then looked down at the disemboweled frog pile. They laid upon their backs, their bodies hollowed of organs. There were maybe twenty five frogs if she included the few she had yet to gut, a paltry amount of meat that Tifa would add some of the vegetables to that hadn't wilted or mildewed from the jungle heat. She would fry it in the wok they bought(a wok was more useful than a pan she had said), and Yuffie would go about making the rice, because no one could make it the way she liked it.

She bit her lip as she studied them. What if one of them was one of the missing people on that public board she passed by in the village? Yuffie swallowed. What if they _ate_ one of them? Cloud and Barret said some of the meat tasted funny. She denied it at the time, but they weren't wrong. She thought it was the jungle heat spoiling the meat, but...

Or or or, she had butchered some adolescent Touch Mes.

The ninja narrowed her eyes as her head snapped back to Aerith as she giggled, the mud stained base of her pink dress swaying from the movement of her hips and the tiny breeze. "Oh, Yuffie," she began, "I don't seriously think you've been feeding us people!"

"I wasn't thinkin' that!" Yuffie sighed harshly before limply dropping the knife to the ground and standing. Her hands were on her hips and an irritated scowl crossed her face. Those little 'what ifs' were there now, ruining her desire to prep dinner.

"Oh, come on!" Aerith put a hand on her friend's shoulder and motioned with her other arm towards the frogs. "They'll be back soon."

"...I don't wanna," came the forced reply.

Aerith giggled again, then gave Yuffie a playful pat on the shoulder. "They're fine, Yuffie. It's just a bunch of dead frogs we're gonna eat for supper again." When she saw that her friend was still balking, Aerith took out a couple of materia and put it into her Carbon Bangle. She waved the filled slots on her wrist at Yuffie. "Heal and All! I'll show you they aren't people."

Yuffie gritted her teeth and looked back at the pile. The thought that she might have killed someone and fed them to her marks disgusted her. Yes, she was trying to not get too attached, and she was after their materia, but she didn't want to do lasting psychological harm to them. Or to herself. She tried telling herself she shouldn't care, but it was unnerving.

Plus, they were growing on her. Especially Aerith. How did she weasel her way onto Yuffie's good side like that?

The flower girl walked towards the prep area, which was just a thick, rectangular piece of burlap, and held out her hands. Aerith closed her eyes and soon the flow of the Planet rushed through her body, her palms spewing a beautiful, sparkling light of pale jade. It sunk towards the frog piles, pops of white light brightening the air for an instant like a muted explosion. Then it dissipated.

The frogs were still.

"See? Just frogs." Aerith dusted her hands off while her face held an amused smirk.

Yuffie snorted and crossed her arms. "I knew that," she quickly replied.

"Hey guys!"

The two turned towards Tifa's voice. She, Cloud and Barret were entering camp through a small foliage ridden path. There was sticky mud splattered over almost every exposed bit of skin and staining clothing brown. They looked exhausted, but satisfied. "Got the buggy out of the mud," Cloud announced.

"Great," Aerith chimed as he swung her hips gently, back and forth. "We were almost done gutting the frogs."

"Great, and it looks like the fire is going strong. We'll have dinner ready in no time!" Tifa wiped a patch of mud from her arm. "After I clean up a little at the creek, that is."

"I can't wait til we get the hell outta here," Barret mumbled. "Bugs won't stop bitin' me!"

Cloud patted Barret's shoulder with his squishy, gloved hand. "You've been a real help, all the bugs've been flying at you and not me. Woulda been harder to unstuck the buggy if I had to slap at my arms as much as you did."

"Eh? Fuck you, twig!" All Barret got was a snicker in return.

Yuffie groaned. She didn't want to think about eating frogs anymore, even if Aerith had reassured her they weren't humans that had an encounter with a freaky monster amphibian. Her ears burned red as more laughter hit her ears from the other women, and she felt it was directed at her and not Cloud and Barret.

"Come on, Yuffie. Let's finish—"

The teen heard a gasp and then a scream of disgust and shock. Without thinking she looked behind her, and immediately regretted doing so. The others added to the scene as they voiced their horror with screams, shouts and gagging.

The pile of gutted frogs were inside the hollowed out abdomen of a young man, who had a few little frog legs sticking out from under his back. A trickle of blood leaked from his mouth as it slowly reformed, and his big brown eyes shrunk down into normal human sized ones, dull and dead.

The arms had reformed with clothing billowing from the formerly froggy skin, and his hair was matted and chestnut brown. There was a dent on his forehead where Yuffie had hit him with a stone. He looked like the man on the billboard, she remembered.

Looking over at the smaller pile, there was a still growing corpse rising from the four other frogs. The back was to them, but it looked like it belonged to a woman. A green skirt poured from the slimy skin and a white blouse soaked in water formed on the body. The hair was limp and blonde.

The sack of guts between them tore open as two sets of human organs swelled inside the thin cloth, making the camp smell like a slaughterhouse. Something, a kidney or a spleen or _whatever_ that thing was plopped out unceremoniously. The ninja couldn't look away, as much as she would like to. She had touched those.

Yuffie felt lightheaded. "Oh no no no no no no—"

"I-I didn't think...It was a joke," Aerith whispered as she held her hand to her mouth. She was trying not to gag.

Cloud looked about as green as some of the frogs. "We didn't—" He pursed his lips and swallowed hard. "No, there's no way we..."

Barret had already gone to the edge of the clearing to clear his stomach. Tifa looked as if she wasn't sure what to do, scream some more or vomit. One hand was to her mouth and the other wrapped in her hair. She had a thousand yard stare.

"W-what do we do?!" Yuffie demanded. She pointed at the two corpses.

Cloud composed himself after a few moments. "I'll fix it."

* * *

"Aye thought we're gon to stay another night?" Cait Sith looked through the window of the buggy as Cloud drove the vehicle through the rest of the jungle. It was getting dark.

"We thought it best to leave. The Shinra might catch up with us," Tifa explained. Her eyes were anxious and she scraped at some dried mud on her arm.

Red XIII's brow had been furrowed since he entered camp. Everyone was giving off red flags, and they seemed anxious for no reason at all. "Did you see something?"

"A-at the camp, yes." Aerith twiddled her fingers, then gave him the least sincere smile he had ever seen. "Hey, you get home sooner, right?"

"Yes, yes I suppose you're right..."

Cait Sith didn't seem convinced. "D'ya think the Shinra could find ye in these thick woods—och!"

Cloud had run over a large frog without a blink. He was trying to get rid of the final images of those dead young people, sinking into the large puddle of mud that had been the buggy's resting place earlier.


End file.
